Israel, Hamas, and the New War: Israeli-Militant-Legered-Fighters Who Sparked a New War with Israel
Hamas wants to break down Israeli society because it sees it as a colonialist people, according to a Palestinian affairs expert at Tel Aviv University.
“They always believe that we should return to Germany andPoland even if we’re from a different country,” says Chorev. “It’s really to break our spirit.”
Israel has led to a travel and economic blockade on the territory for the last 16 years. Israel says it wants to contain attacks by Hamas after it took over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu kept the political division between the territories so they wouldn’t join forces to create a Palestinian state.
Israeli officials say it’s an ideology of hate against Jews and Israel that is dominant. Netanyahu said that Hamas was worse than the Islamic State. Israel, the United States and other countries recognize Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group as terrorists.
Some 20,000 to 25,000 Hamas militant in the Qassam wing, according to Gaza experts, like Harel Chorev of Tel Aviv University. Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds brigades have about 5,000 to 6,000 members.
Hamas-Led Fighters Sparked a New War with Israel: New Details emerge about Gaza-Leg islamic jihad militants
In the Kibbutz Be’eri massacre, spacious homes were torn apart, with kitchens turned upside down and Rummikub game tiles strewn over the floors. In one house the smell of a blood-soaked mattress lingers.
Israel’s army says it collected terabytes of footage of the attacks from GoPro cameras retrieved from Gaza militants, as well as victims’ cellphones and neighborhood security cameras.
As Israeli bombardments on the Gaza Strip continue, which Gaza health officials say have claimed the lives of more than 7,000 Palestinians, new details are emerging about the men who carried out the brutal violence in Israel that sparked the current war.
Hamas’ political bureau member said they wanted to get the attention of the world. “Please, look at the Palestinians. We are under oppression and torture and collective punishment all the time. This is our message to the world.”
A senior Hamas official told NPR the group staged the attack to draw attention to Israel’s punishing restrictions on the Gaza Strip. Other Hamas leaders say they took hostages in order to get a grand prisoner exchange.
Both his neighbor and his father spoke on condition of anonymity, and referred to Mohammed only by his first name, out of concern Israel could target them.
Source: New details emerge about Hamas-led fighters who sparked a new war with Israel
Mohammed’s neighbor, a taxi driver, and a business selling food: “What he wanted to do was help me to be kind to him”
His father told NPR, “He wants God to be kind to him.” To be a martyr is something that he was trying to do. I hope God accepts him as a martyr.”
He said Mohammed made it a mile or two inside Israel before he was shot by the Israeli aircraft and died from his wounds.
Mohammed’s neighbor said he disappeared on the day of the attacks. His family only discovered what happened the next day, when a fellow militant returned from Israel back to Gaza with Mohammed’s cellphone and personal effects, and told Mohammed’s family what had happened.
Everyone in the family knew that he was an employee of Islamic Jihad, a small Palestinian militia in Gaza that is aligned with Iran.
Mohammed’s neighbor in Gaza said he had led an ordinary life. He wasn’t finished with his high school exam. He worked as a taxi driver, had a big wedding party with family and friends, and started a business selling food products.
They were young at the time. They were well-trained and they were well-equipped. They had specific instructions. They had a mix of motivations, tied to the unique conditions and ideologies that permeate life in Gaza.
Source: New details emerge about Hamas-led fighters who sparked a new war with Israel
The Story of Hamas in Gaza: How Israel Should Get It Wrong and How it Will Affect the Rest of the Middle East
The videos also capture the men’s heavy breathing, nervous pacing and shouted instructions. In one of the most gruesome scenes screened to foreign media, a man calls out for a knife and calls to cut off a wounded man’s head, before attempting to behead him with a garden hoe.
In Gaza, Ghattas says elite fighters traveled on false passports to countries like Lebanon or Iran to learn the combat methods of Hezbollah. He thinks that they returned to Gaza to train the attackers.
The Israeli army claims that the Iranians were involved in foreign training. Iran does not agree that there was prior coordination.
The military says it has found detailed attack and abduction plans with the Hamas fighters, and that it has released interrogation videos of several of the attackers it has arrested.
There are no easy solutions to the war in Gaza. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control will doom not just Gaza but also much of the rest of the Middle East.
How Israel would conduct such a ground campaign would have an effect on all of this. Israel should show that it isn’t trying to punish the Palestinians, and that it is fighting Hamas, if it is to reduce international pressure to stop its attack. It must create safe corridors for humanitarian assistance, including from Israeli territory through the Kerem Shalom crossing point. To alleviate the suffering, it should allow international groups, such as Doctors Without Borders, to operate safely there and include Israeli doctors who can set up field hospitals — something they have experience doing in Syria and Ukraine.
For example, Morocco, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain could provide police — not military forces — to ensure security for the new civil administration and those responsible for reconstruction. Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E and Qatar could provide the bulk of the funding for reconstruction, explaining their roles as necessary to relieve the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza and help them recover. Canada and others could provide monitoring mechanisms to ensure that assistance would go to its intended purposes.
The formula should guide reality in Gaza. It would require Israel to remain in Gaza after the fighting ends until it could hand over to some kind of an interim administration to prevent a vacuum and begin the enormous task of reconstruction. The administration should be run by Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank, or the diaspora, under an international umbrella that would encompass Arab and non-Arab nations. The United States would need to mobilize and organize the effort, possibly using an umbrella like the United Nations or the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee donor group to the Palestinians or even acting on the proposal by President Emmanuel Macron of France to use the international anti-ISIS coalition to counter Hamas. Such a coalition could help create the division of labor that would be necessary.
What would a victory of Hamas mean? It would mean that the military infrastructure, much of which is physically connected to civilian infrastructure, was largely destroyed, which left the group without the ability to block a reconstruction for Gaza as it did in the past. This would mean that Gaza’s war-making capacity couldn’t be rebuilt, and that there wouldn’t be any war-making capacity at all.
Even though the world saw Israel bombing Gaza, people were ready to believe it was done deliberately. Even the United Arab Emirates, which had condemned the Hamas attack, issued a later statement condemning “the Israeli attack that targeted Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip, resulting in the death and injury of hundreds of people.” It went on to call on “the international community to intensify efforts to reach an immediate cease-fire to prevent further loss of life.”
But they said this in private. They have different public postures. The Hamas massacre of more than 1,400 people in Israel has not been denounced by a lot of Arab states. Why? As Israel retaliated and Palestinian casualties and suffering grew, Arab leaders realized that they needed to be seen as standing up for the Palestinians, at least rhetorically.
The aims of Iran and its partners were not considered plausible because of Israel’s military strength. The events of Oct. 7 made a big difference. As one commander in the Israeli military said, “If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.”
I have devoted my entire professional life to U.S. peacemaking policy in the past 35 years, from when the Soviet Union was still a colony to when Iraq was still part of Iraq. The finding of a peaceful and lasting solution between Israel and the Palestinians is something that has kept me busy.
The Palestinian officials have released a list of more than 6,700 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the outbreak of war with Israel.
Israel has pummeled Gaza ever since Hamas, the militant group that governs the territory, unleashed a day of violence on Israeli communities near its border on Oct. 7, attacking soldiers and civilians in a rampage that Israel says left 1,400 people dead. Nearly 230 hostages continue to be held by Hamas.
“We absolutely know that the death toll continues to rise in Gaza,” Kirby said in a briefing. “You don’t need to rely on numbers put forth by Hamas.”
The list could not be verified on its own. With Gaza’s borders closed, it is impossible for foreign journalists to verify information. The ministry is run in coordination with the Palestinian Authority, and its numbers can be seen at the hospitals in Gaza. The ministry’s numbers are seen as credible by humanitarian organizations and are widely cited, including by the U.S. State Department.
On Thursday Israel said that it had killed a Hamas intelligence official and the leader of Gaza’s Hamas party, in an attack which it said was the work of two architects.
The night was terrible. Every second and every minute there was continuous bombing,” said Shaimaa Ahed on Thursday. The 20-year-old engineer is documenting her experiences during the war for the Institute for Middle East Understanding, a U.S. based non-profit that seeks to give voice to Palestinians.
The home where Ahed is staying is so full of dirt and gunpowder, she said, that everyone inside takes turns wearing a mask with a wet cloth held over it, hoping to avoid breathing in unhealthy air.
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I’m not ok, that’s for sure. I’m alive and well, but I’m not physically or mentally ready to leave the Gaza strip, and so are all the people there,” she said. If it weren’t for our faith and religion, we wouldn’t have been able to survive.
This is a long road. This is not just another round with Gaza. This is something much bigger,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a military spokesperson, told NPR Thursday.
A quarter million Israelis have been displaced from their homes in Israel’s north and south, officials say, about half of them voluntarily and half of them under government supervision.
Under evacuation orders are towns near the border of the Gaza Strip, an area known as the Gaza Envelope, and towns along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where violence with Hezbollah has increased over the last few weeks.
In a conversation with Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep in New York, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said that he had met with leaders of the resistance and heard plans that are more powerful than what he had previously heard.
“If this situation continues, and women and children and civilians are still killed in Gaza and the West Bank, anything will be possible,” Abdollahian said.
Iran provides “only political” support for Hamas but when asked if he would deny that Iran supplied Hamas with weapons, he said he was only referring to the current state of affairs.
He said they have enough missiles, rockets and drones to easily get them from anywhere. They know how to produce their own weapons, and they chose to do this operation because of that.
NPR’s interview with Iran’s Foreign Minister: Why the U.S. shouldn’t tolerate the continued war crimes in the region
Below are more highlights of NPR’s interview with Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. The interview was conducted through an interpreter.
This conflict shouldn’t spread out. We’re encouraging everyone to stop war crimes as soon as possible. But you know, the situation remains complicated. It’s difficult for our region to tolerate the fact that 7,000 civilians have been killed as the result of the bombardments of the Israeli regime. This is the image that we’re now seeing in the region and because of the continuation of crimes of the Israeli regime, the whole region has been turned into a powder keg.
They decide for themselves. Any time, anything can happen. We encourage the U.S. to stop supporting the Israeli regime. According to information we have inside the region, both the security and political systems of Israel have totally collapsed. The Israeli citizens have no trust whatsoever in [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his security and political system. Right now, the only thing functional in Israel is their war machine that is also being run and controlled and managed by the U.S. Of course, if I were to be fair, I’d say Netanyahu also has his own role to play. Because if the attacks and the war stop, then he will fall in less than two days.
About the foreign minister’s past comments about launching “pre-emptive action” via members of the “resistance front” and the subsequent barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon
Israel is killing large numbers of people and at the same time you expect them to release these people, giving them a free hand in killing them, and at the same time tying your own hands? This isn’t logical. Why are you supporting the continuation of war with this question? Why not try for a ceasefire? … When the time comes for Israel to release the military prisoners, they should not forget that there are 6,000 other Palestinians who are still in captivity. The important thing now is that they’re ready to release those that are not with the military.